1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an information processing apparatus which manages various information about printers including their status and to a printer control method for the information processing apparatus as well as to a storage medium and a program.
2. Related Background Art
Recently, network equipment has come into common use, with a large number of personal computers (hereinafter abbreviated to PCs) and printers connected to networks. As a system for use in such an environment to print a document which has a large number of pages or of which a large number of copies are required, a system (distributed printing system) is known which spools a print job temporarily and outputs data for each page or each copy to a plurality of printers in order to reduce print time. For example, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2001-290623 discloses a technology for detecting the latest operational status of each printer in the distributed printing system from a real printer driver 130, 140, or 150 of the each printer and updating the detected latest operational status of the each printer at predetermined intervals.